The filmmakers behind the twenty-fifth James Bond film have hired Fleabag creator and star (as well as co-creator of Killing Eve) Phoebe Waller-Bridge to edit the screenplay and write the female characters more three-dimensionally, according to BuzzFeed. With the “#MeToo” and “Time’s Up” movements taking the industry by storm, the womanizing MI6 secret agent’s relevance has been called into question, but Waller-Bridge believes 007 can be evolved to reflect the gender politics of today. This outing will be Daniel Craig’s last, and Waller-Bridge says she looks forward to writing his lines because of the “wryness” he brings to Bond.

Producer James Cameron promises Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) will be a followup to his The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), according to ShortList. Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), McG’s Terminator Salvation (2009), and Alan Taylor’s Terminator Genisys (2015) earned sixty-nine percent, thirty-three percent, and twenty-five percent aggregated critical review scores on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, whereas Cameron’s original sits at a hundred percent. In his interview, Cameron says the tone is what makes Dark Fate something of a third installment in a trilogy after T1 and T2, abandoning the more convoluted elements of the other films and instead focusing on a simpler storyline of one character chasing another.

All three of these characters would be loathsome human beings, but, in the Golden Age of Television, they make for our favorite antiheroes. They are sociopaths with a body count between them that makes us ask ourselves why we root for them (or at least it should).

Don Draper ranks as one of the greatest among them, and he did it without killing anyone.

If you don’t know what to watch next, AMC’s Mad Men (2007-2015) is available to stream on Netflix.

No stranger to the antihero, series creator Matthew Weiner saw HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007) win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama in 2004 and 2007, when he served as their executive producer.

Set in 1960s Manhattan, the period drama focuses on the hard-drinking Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the self-made creative director at a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Again, Don isn’t a violent criminal – his failure as a husband, father, and professional are what characterize him.

Meanwhile, all around him, the countercultural revolutions of the decade change life at work and at home.

An episode of Mad Men can go by without much happening, and its commitment to historical realism includes deadpan representations of the sexism, racism, homophobia, child abuse, alcoholism, and smoking of the era, which may be off-putting to modern audiences.

Though not for everyone, Mad Men’s slice-of-life experimentation with TV storytelling is complex with subtext. The setting itself is the star of the show, striking an unpredictable tone of crippling lawnmower accidents and nipples in gift boxes between the more mundane moments.

The aesthetic is a snapshot of the American Dream imperial capitalists at the time were propagandizing for the rest of the world in an effort to combat the global influence of communism during the Cold War.

Indeed, the 1960s may look glamorous on Mad Men, like one of Don Draper’s cigarette ads, but once you realize it’s only to sell a product that slowly kills the consumer, the glamour fades like the passing of time to reveal the social inequality and decadent consumerism lying underneath.

The fourth and fifth seasons are the crown jewels of the series, when the drama comes into its own, finds its voice, and develops its cast into their most dynamic.

One wishes, however, that Weiner were as ethical in his approach to Don Draper as he was with Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini).

In the final season of The Sopranos, Tony’s psychiatrist, Doctor Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), comes to accept what an irredeemable monster he is and condemns him in a scene that’s cathartic for anybody who’s ever had to “break up” with an antisocial personality.

Mad Men, on the other hand, features no such reckoning for Don. The closest we get is a phone call in the series finale with leading lady Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who he manipulates out of chastising him for his selfishness, to talking him down off the ledge.

As a result, Don’s actions could come across as romanticized for the less-than-critical viewer. In spite of everything else, he is a successful, talented, attractive businessman with a tragic backstory that, for those who long to identify with him, could make him too sympathetic.

The ambiguous ending does not clarify whether Don is a changed man or not after his conversation with Peggy, which could mean he gets away with his narcissistic behavior one last time…

…Or not.

While Mad Men is not known for lending itself to easy interpretation, that’s what lends it well to re-watches – you can binge it over and over again and find something new every time. It is a powerfully honest character study of a man on the run, not from the law, but from himself.

Protestors at the Georgia State Capitol when Governor Brian Kemp signed legislation outlawing almost all abortions. (Image Credit: The Los Angeles Times).

Female film workers in Georgia fear for their careers after Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed a law banning most abortions at six weeks and liberal celebrities like Alyssa Milano, David Simon, and George Takei called for Hollywood to pull out of the state, according to the Los Angeles Times. Many of these women were already activists who marched on the capitol to protest the bill before it became law, and they say the entertainment industry should instead fund local groups opposed to the legislation, rather than boycott the state altogether. With their tax incentives for filmmaking companies, Georgia is the top filming location in the United States.

The cast of Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall attend the December premiere in Beijing. (Image Courtesy: Foreign Policy).

As part of the trade war between the United States and China, Chinese studios are terminating American-born actors and cancelling international-themed works, according to Foreign Policy. Sources say there is no official order banning Americans from the Chinese film industry, and these executives are writing their blacklist in case such an order is passed down in the future, since Beijing restricted the importation of South Korean soap stars and pop singers in 2016 after Seoul deployed an American-made missile defense system that July. Because China is one of Hollywood’s most lucrative markets, an outright ban could cost U.S. filmmakers billions.

After debuting last month, Criterion Channel offers over a thousand titles from the Criterion Collection as well as distributor Janus Films for eleven dollars a month, according to Fortune; the archive is relatively small, but there are more Golden Age movies than on Netflix, which largely limits itself to the last twenty-five years, and Amazon Prime, which charges members extra to watch older pictures. Reviewer Lance Whitney writes that Criterion includes a diversity of silent, sound, short, feature-length, international, and independent releases from Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, and IFC Films; while the likes of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), or Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s American classics are not yet part of the selection, the library will grow if more studios sign licensing deals. Overall, Whitney’s review is positive, praising special features such as interviews, documentaries, and collections; however, while the fledgling streaming service is compatible with all browsers, some available texts are only searchable on the website.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Kenneth Branagh are set to make an appearance in Christopher Nolan’s next project. (Image Credit: Variety).

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Kenneth Branagh have been cast in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming international espionage epic, Tenet (2020), according to Variety. Their co-stars will include Clémence Poésy, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Elizabeth Debicki, Robert Pattinson, and leading man John David Washington. Shooting is taking place on location in seven countries, with director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema mixing together a cocktail of Imax and 70mm film for the big screen, and Warner Brothers will distribute the action movie worldwide July 17, 2020; Nolan is also serving as co-producer for his own original screenplay, alongside his wife, Emma Thomas, their follow-up to the critical and commercial triumph, Dunkirk (2017).